Bourne 4 - The Bourne Legacy (25 page)

"Pull over!" she cried. "I am Quai d'Orsay! Pull over or risk the consequences!" The courier ignored her. Drawing her sidearm, she aimed it at his head. Her arm was straight, elbow locked. Tracking him with the gun's sight, she aimed at the leading edge of his silhouette. She squeezed the trigger.

But just as she did so, the Voxan swerved hard to their left, slipped in front of an oncoming car in the next lane, jumped the narrow concrete divider, shot through the oncoming traffic.

"My God!" Berard breathed. "He's headed onto the off-ramp!" Even as she slewed the Peugeot around, she saw the Voxan threading its way between the traffic exiting the Al. Tires screeched, horns blared, terrified drivers shook their fists and cursed. Berard noted these reactions with only part of her mind. The other part was engaged in driving through the stalled traffic, up over the median, across the street and onto the off-ramp herself.

She made it as far as the top of the ramp before she ran into a virtual wall of vehicles. She raced out into the rain, saw the Voxan accelerating between lanes of the oncoming traffic. Bourne's driving was astounding, but how long could he continue such perilous acrobatics?

The Voxan disappeared behind the silver oval cylinder of a tanker truck. Berard sucked in her breath as she saw the huge eighteen-wheeler come barreling along in the adjacent lane. She heard the harsh sound of air brakes, then the Voxan struck the semi's massive radiator grille head-on, instantly erupting in a howling ball of oily flame.

Jason Bourne saw what he liked to call the convergence of opportunity set up right in front of him. He was running between two lanes of oncoming traffic. To his right was a tanker truck; to his left, a bit farther ahead, was a massive eighteen-wheeler. The choice was instinctual, there was no time for second thoughts. He committed his mind and his body to the convergence. He lifted his legs and, for an instant, he was balanced on the Voxan's seat with only his left hand for support. He aimed the Voxan at the eighteenwheeler barreling toward him on the left, then let go of the handlebar. Reaching out with his right hand, his fingers grasped hold of a rung of the skeletal metal ladder that rose up the tanker truck's curved side and he was jerked off the bike. Then his grip slipped on the rain-slick metal, and he was on the verge of being swept away like a twig in the wind. Tears welled up in his eyes at the pain that ripped through the same shoulder he'd strained outside the cargo hold of the plane. Both hands on the rung, he tightened his grip. As he swung fully onto the ladder, pressing himself against the tanker, the Voxan slammed into the eighteen-wheeler's radiator. The tanker truck shuddered, rocking on its shocks as it hurtled through the ball of flame. Then it was past, rolling its way south toward Orly Airport and Bourne's freedom.

There were many reasons for Martin Lindros' swift and unerring rise up the Agency's slippery slope to become DDCI at the age of thirty-eight. He was smart, he came from the right schools, and he had the ability to keep his head even in a crisis. Moreover, his neareidetic memory gave him a singular edge in keeping the administrative side of the CIA running smoothly. All important assets, no doubt—mandatory, in fact, for any successful DDCI. However, the DCI had chosen Lindros for an even more crucial reason: He was fatherless.

The DCI had known Martin Lindros' father well. For three years they had served together in Russia and Eastern Europe—until the elder Lindros had been killed in a car bomb attack. Martin Lindros had been twenty at the time and the effect on him had been incalculable. It was at the elder Lindros' funeral, while watching the young man's pale and pinched face, that the DCI knew he wanted to draw Martin Lindros into the same web that had so fascinated his father.

Approaching him had been easy; he'd been in a vulnerable place. The DCI had been primed to act, because his unerring instinct had recognized Martin Lindros' desire for revenge. The DCI had seen that the young man went to Georgetown upon his graduation from Yale. This served two purposes: It physically brought Martin into his orbit, and it ensured he would take the requisite courses for the career path the DCI had chosen for him. The DCI himself had inducted the young man into the Agency, had overseen every phase of his training. And because he wanted to bind the young man to him for all time, he at last provided the revenge Martin so desperately sought— the name and address of the terrorist responsible for constructing the car bomb.

Martin Lindros had followed the DCI's instructions to the letter, showing a commendably steady hand when he had put a bullet between the terrorist's eyes. Had he actually been the one who had made the car bomb? Even the DCI couldn't be certain. But what difference did it make? He
was
a terrorist and in his day had made many car bombs. Now he was dead— one more terrorist disposed of—and Martin Lindros could sleep easy at night, knowing that he had avenged his father's murder.

"You see how Bourne fucked us," Lindros was saying now. "He was the one who called D.C. Metro as soon as he saw your cruisers. He knew you had no official jurisdiction in the district, unless you were working with the Agency."

"Sadly, you've got that fucking-A right." Detective Harris of the Virginia State Police nodded as he downed his sour mash whiskey. "But now that the Frogs have him in their sights, maybe they'll have better luck running him to ground than we did."

"They're Frogs," Lindros said morosely.

"Even so, they've gotta be able to do something right sometime, no?" Lindros and Harris were sitting in the Froggy Bottom Lounge on Pennsylvania Avenue. At this hour, the bar was rilled students from George Washington University. For more than an hour Lindros had been watching bare midriffs pierced by navel rings and pert buttocks almost tucked into short skirts nearly twenty years younger than he was. There came a time in a man's life, he thought, when he began looking in the rearview mirror and realizing that he was no longer young. None of these girls would give him a second look; they didn't even know he existed.

"Why is it," he said, "that a man can't stay young all his life?" Harris laughed and called for more drinks.

"You think it's funny?"

They had passed beyond screaming at each other, beyond frosty silence, beyond snide and cutting remarks. In the end, they had said to hell with it and had decided to get drunk.

"Yeah, I think it's damn funny," Harris said, making room for the new drinks. "Here you are mooning over pussy, thinkin' life's passed you by. This isn't about pussy, Martin, though to tell you the truth, I never did pass up the opportunity to get laid."

"Okay, smart guy, what
is
it about?"

"We lost, that's all. We got into Jason Bourne's game and he beat us six ways from Sunday. Not that he didn't have good reason to."

Lindros sat up a little straighter, paid for the precipitate movement with a brief bout of vertigo. He put a hand to the side of his head. 'What the hell does that mean?" Harris had a habit of swigging his whiskey around as if it was mouth-wash. His throat clicked when he swallowed. "I don't think Bourne murdered Conklin and Panov." Lindros groaned. "Jesus, Harry, not that again."

"I'll say it till I'm blue in the face. What I want to know is why you don't wanna hear it."

Lindros picked up his head. "Okay, okay. Tell me why you think Bourne is innocent."

"What's the point?"

"I'm asking you, aren't I?"

Harris seemed to consider. He shrugged, pulled out his wallet, extracted a slip of paper, which he unfolded on the table. "Because of this parking ticket." Lindros picked the slip up, read it. "This ticket is made out to a Dr. Felix Schiffer." He shook his head in confusion.

"Felix Schiffer's a scofflaw," Harris said. "I wouldn't've known anything about him, but we're cracking down on scofflaws this month and one of my men couldn't get to first base with tracking him down." He tapped the ticket. "It took some doing, but I found out why my guy couldn't find him. Turns out that all of Schiffer's mail is being sent to Alex Conklin."

Lindros shook his head. "So?"

"So when I tried to run a database check on this Dr. Felix Schiffer, I ran up against a wall."

Lindros felt his head starting to clear. "What kind of a wall?"

"One put up by the United States Government." Harris finished off his whiskey in a single toss, swish and swallow. "This Dr. Schiffer's been put on ice with a capital
1.
1

don't know what the hell Conklin was into, but it was hidden so deep I'll bet even his own people didn't know nothin' about it." He shook his head. "He wasn't killed by a rogue agent, Martin; on that I'll stake my life."

As Stepan Spalko rode up the private elevator at Humanistas, Ltd., he was in as near to good spirits as he could get. Except for the unexpected development with Khan, everything was now back on track. The Chechens were his; they were intelligent, fearless and willing to die for their cause. As for Arsenov, he was, if nothing else, a dedicated and disciplined leader. This was why Spalko had chosen him to betray Khalid Murat. Murat had not quite trusted Spalko; he'd had a keen nose for duplicity. But now Murat was gone. Spalko had no doubt that the Chechens would perform as he envisioned. On the other front, the damnable Alexander Conklin was dead and the CIA was convinced Jason Bourne was his murderer, two birds with one stone. Still, there was the core issue of the weapon and of Felix Schiffer. He felt the intense pressure of what still needed to be done. He knew that he was running out of time; there was much yet to be accomplished. He got off at a mid-level floor accessible only with a magnetic key he wore. Letting himself into his sun-splashed living quarters, he crossed to the bank of windows overlooking the Danube, the deep green of Margaret Island, the city beyond. He stood staring out at the Houses of Parliament, thinking of the time to come, when undreamed-of power would be his. Sunlight spun off the medieval facade, the flying buttresses, the domes and spires. Inside, men of power met daily, prattling inconsequentially. His chest filled with air. It was he, Spalko, who knew where the real power in this world resided. He held out his hand, clenched it into a fist. Soon they would all know—the American president in his White House, the Russian president in the Kremlin, the sheiks in their magnificent Arabian palaces. Soon they would all know the true meaning of fear. Naked, he padded into the large, opulent bathroom whose tiles were the color of lapis lazuli. Beneath eight streaming jets, he took a shower, scrubbing himself until his skin turned red. Then he dried himself with a thick white oversized Turkish towel and changed into jeans and a denim shirt.

At a gleaming stainless-steel wet-bar, he drew a cup of freshly brewed coffee from the automatic maker. He added cream and sugar, a dollop of whipped cream from the halffridge below. For several moments thereafter, he stood sipping the coffee, allowing his mind to go pleasurably out of focus, allowing the anticipation to build. There were so many wonderful things to look forward to today!

Setting down the coffee cup, he tied on a butcher's apron. He eschewed his loafers, polished to a wicked shine, for a pair of green rubber garden boots. Sipping the delicious coffee, he crossed to a wood-paneled wall. There was a small table with one drawer, which he pulled open. Inside was a box of latex gloves. Humming to himself, he drew out a pair, snapped them on. Then he pressed a button and two of the wood panels slid aside. He stepped through into a decidedly odd room. The walls were of black concrete; the floor was composed of white tiles, lower in the center where a huge drain was set. A hose on a reel was attached to one wall. The ceiling was heavily baffled. The only furniture was a wooden table, scarred, stained dark in places with blood, and a dentist's chair with modifications made to Spalko's exacting specifications. Beside the chair was a three-tiered cart on which lay a gleaming array of metal implements barbed with ominous-looking ends—straight, hooked and corkscrewed.

In the chair, his wrists and ankles bound in steel cuffs, was László Molnar, as naked as the day he was born. Molnar's face and body were cut, bruised and swollen, his eyes sunk deep within black circles of agony and despair. Spalko entered the room as briskly and professionally as any doctor.

"My dear Laszl6,1 must say you're looking the worse for wear." He stood close enough to see Molnar's nostrils flare at the scent of the coffee. "It's to be expected, though, isn't it?

You've had quite a difficult night. Nothing you could have expected when you set out for the opera, eh? But not to worry, the excitement isn't over yet." He put down the coffee cup at Molnar's elbow, took up one of the instruments. "This one, I think, yes."

"What... what are you going to do?" Molnar asked in a cracked voice, thin as parchment.

"Where is Dr. Schiffer?" Spalko asked in a conversational tone of voice. Molnar's head jerked from side to side, his jaw clamped shut, as if to ensure that no words would pass his lips.

Spalko tested the needlepoint of the instrument. "I honestly don't know why you hesitate, László. I have the weapon, though Dr. Schiffer is missing—"

"Taken from under your nose," Molnar whispered.

Spalko, smiling, applied the instrument to his prisoner and in short order Molnar was sufficiently stimulated to scream.

Standing back for a moment, he brought the coffee cup to his lips, swallowed. "As you've no doubt realized by now, this room is soundproof. You can't be heard—no one is going to save you, least of all Vadas; he doesn't even know that you're missing." Taking up another instrument, he spun it into Molnar. "So you see there is no hope," he said. "Unless you tell me what I want to know. As it happens, László, I'm your one and only friend now; I'm the one who can save you." He grasped Molnar under the chin and kissed his bloody forehead. "I'm the one who truly loves you." Molnar closed his eyes and again shook his head.

Spalko looked directly into Molnar's eyes. "I don't want to hurt you, László. You know that, don't you?" His voice, unlike his actions, was gentle. "But your stubbornness troubles me." He continued his work on Molnar. "I am wondering whether you understand the true nature of the circumstances into which you've fallen. This pain you feel is Vadas' doing. It's Vadas who got you into these dire straits. Conklin, too, I shouldn't wonder, but Conklin is dead."